THE TEST PAPER

The Test Paper ~ 88 ~ O serene soul! Return to your Lord joyful, and pleasing in His sight. Join My servants and enter My Paradise. (The Qur’an 89:15-30) Man is confronted in this world with two kinds of states, sometimes of gaining, sometimes of losing. Both these conditions are in the nature of tests. They are designed to judge man on the response he makes to these situations. If on gaining, a man becomes vain and proud, and on losing, he suffers from negative feelings, then he has failed in the test. A very different kind of person is one who, on gaining, bows before God in thankfulness, and, on losing, bows again to express his humility. It is the second of these two who has been called a ‘serene soul.’ Whatever man receives in this world in the form of wealth, or in any other form, are all tests of one kind or another. These have no value in themselves; they are a means to another end. That is, man should make use of these things in such a Way that,